Patrick Mulcahy on NAZA & Inside Gaza
The late evening audience at Finsbury Park Picturehouse filed out quietly, overwhelmed by the subject matter of the film they had just watched. This was my experience seeing “Naza”, a documentary of collected testimony by Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor augmented by footage credited anonymously. It describes the process by which Israeli intelligence assesses acceptable civilian casualties before bombs targeting Hamas operatives are dropped. “We have to trust the system,” one interviewee says, their face shown in profile shrouded in shadow, “Otherwise what would happen?” We are told that the bombing takes place at night and focuses on housing (“where they live”). Israeli intelligence tracks Hamas members through their phones, using technology Israel provided to Palestinians, though Palestinians and Palestine are not words mentioned in the film. (“Gaza is just Hamas,” one interviewee says.) The filmmakers contrast the descriptions of night attacks with images of Tel Aviv at night. A busy motorway, individuals watching television in the building opposite. Abraham and Szor conduct their interviews (Abraham in front of the camera, Szor behind it) from the roof of a building, where “we can see others, but they can’t see us”. A caption tells us that 24 Israeli intelligence operatives were interviewed, but the viewer can’t keep count.
The film reminds us of the impact of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. 900 civilians dead, 251 Israeli and foreign nationals held hostage. The figures differ depending on the source; the 900 figure is quoted in the film. The Israeli response was ostensibly justified to safeguard the return of hostages but turned into disproportionate killing of women and children, with fatalities running to the tens of thousands. So-called “rules of engagement” were ignored. Abraham and Szor don’t use voiceover. Cutaways include news reports or medium shots of residents whose identity is obscured by window frames. The film is divided into chapters, including “Lavender”, which focuses on the AI [Artificial Intelligence] targeting system; attacks were conducted on the likelihood that the target fit the “Hamas” profile, behaving as if a member of the group, the time set when children were told “father would be home”. Some of the interviewees illustrate their testimony. Their banal, functional pictures contrast with the high civilian casualties that resulted – up to 500 dead in one bombing.
Abraham encourages some of the interviewees to talk about their own feelings towards the killing carried out on the basis of their assessments. This is less to apportion blame to individual analysts – although they undoubtedly participated in war crimes – and more about how they felt about the doubts of the efficacy of the campaign. Bombing took place even when the nominal target wasn’t home. The bombing campaign is a blunt instrument designed to intimidate at high human cost rather than diminish the field capabilities of a terrorist group. The interviewees struggle to remain dispassionate.
The filmmakers’ attitude towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is made explicit from an archive television interview shown near the end of the film. A much younger Netanyahu describes terrorism as the indiscriminate killing of women and children for a political goal. By his own definition, Israel is acting as a terrorist state; the Israeli Defence Force are state-sponsored terrorists.
In the film’s conclusion, we see mobile phone footage of the remains of several buildings in Gaza, including one in which several children, identifiable only by their bare feet, are crushed by rubble. We hear a Palestinian’s lament. Abraham and Szor have no need to further illustrate the outcome of bombing raids. Pictures speak louder than words.
Coinciding with the release of “Naza” is a one-off screening of director Hélène Lam Trong’s documentary, “Inside Gaza” at London’s Cine Lumiere. This depicts a group of journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) attempting to report on conditions in the Gaza Strip following the 7 October attacks. We see footage of the city before 7 October and the devastation that followed. AFP journalists were displaced from their office – an initial threat to destroy the building does not materialise – but were forced to remain in the country while displaced. Footage that they produced failed to reach the West, and some of the images they recorded – a dead child wrapped in a white sheet – were debunked by Israel (alleging that the child was a doll). Journalists were smeared with association with Hamas by their presence at parades (reporting on them), and no foreign journalists were allowed into Gaza, a means by which Israel could control the narrative. Eventually, after 203 days, they were allowed to leave, dispersing to Cyprus, Belgium, England and Qatar. In contrast with Naza, the documentary is filled with images – missiles leaving trails of smoke, the many casualties of bombing, an emaciated child clinging to its mother. The tragedy is that in the first months following the October 7 attack, Israel won the propaganda war, whilst pursuing a policy of maximum destruction. The film’s final images show what’s lost.
“Naza” is on general cinema release. “Inside Gaza” screens on 2 November 2026